Cable Hosts Try to Decipher Trump’s ‘Absolute Word Salad’ on Childcare

Donald Trump’s vague, meandering answer to a question about what—if any—legislation he would support to lower child care costs drew considerable attention Wednesday night on the three major cable news networks, including on CNN, where anchor Anderson Cooper called the former president’s response an “absolute word salad.”

Meanwhile, on MSNBC’s All In, anchor Chris Hayes played the entirety of Trump’s answer, which included no mention of any legislation, but rather the incoherent statement that he “want[s] to stay with child care.” Trump’s comment was his final one during the question-and-answer session at an appearance at the Economic Club of New York.

“If you win in November,” Reshma Saujani, founder of the nonprofit organization Girls Who Code, asked the former president, “can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and, if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”

You can read Trump’s statement in full here, but among his reply, reads: “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down—you know, I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that—because look, child care is child care, it’s—couldn’t, you know, it’s something, you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.”

His answer was followed by applause from the audience and some on stage.

“They applaud at the end,” Hayes laughed on MSNBC. “After he’s like falling all over, he does the Simone Biles dismount. MAGA!”

“Did you get all that?” Hayes continued. “Remember, the question was: What specific piece of legislation will you advance to keep childcare costs down?”

Hayes then contrasted Trump’s answer with a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris addressing the same issue last month in North Carolina. In that speech, she outlined how she has proposed an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, as well as a $6,000 to parents of newborns.

“So, there you have it,” Hayes concluded. “In Trump’s defense, he was not on teleprompter. He was just riffing there. But, I don’t know, man. That’s the quality of the brains right now that we’ve got over there.”

On MSNBC’s The Last Word a few hours later, Lawrence O’Donnell excoriated Trump’s answer as a “horrific jumble.” O’Donnell also pointed out how “disturbing” it was that Trump received an applause for his “typical Trump incoherence”, and blamed those in attendance for bringing the nation “to this crisis point.”

On Fox News’ The Five, meanwhile, liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov challenged her conservative colleagues to translate the former president’s comments.

“I would dare any of you to listen to his answer on childcare and tell me what the hell he was talking about,” she said. “It was one of the more incoherent things I’ve ever heard. He thinks tariffs are going to pay for everything. We know that they’re attacks on the consumer.”

“None of it is explainable,” Tarlov said moments later, before also criticizing JD Vance’s solution to child care costs. “This issue, which is a big priority for people—obviously a central plank of what is going on in the Harris campaign—he doesn’t have an answer besides tariffs, and JD Vance yesterday was talking about just having grandma and grandpa do more—that that’s some sort of solution for people.”

No one at the roundtable opted to take Tarlov up on her challenge to explain Trump’s answer.